Evidence
by Shannen
Summary: What if there were something else that helped Chloe to decide to edit her journalistic style. Spoilers for Rogue.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything Smallville, even though I'd like to own Lex and possibly Clark too. It's all the property of the WB, DC Comics, blah, blah...you know the drill. It ain't mine, I'm just borrowing  
Author's Notes: Some spoilers for Rogue. Chloe POV.Basically, I didn't like that we didn't see any Clark/Chloe interaction after the Torch incident, so I decided to make some up. The timeline on the show doesn't jive with this too much, so just suspend belief for a second and pretend that Chloe's last scene with Lana happened after...like a day after..Jonathan came back home. Basically, I came up with this idea as to why Chloe was suddenly a bit more willing to curb her writing style, because I believe there had to be more to make her come to the realization other than the Kwan/Lana thing.  
  
I just threw this together in like a half hour, so I apologize in advance if it sucks beyond the telling of it.  
  
Evidence  
  
I peek tentatively around the corner of the slightly ajar barn door. The light inside was dim, and it takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the slight light provided by the moon as it filters through the cracks in the barn walls. 'Still, better to be safe than whapped in the face by a rake,' I think to myself as I twist the base of the small flashlight attached to my keyring. I shine the small light into the barn and carefully pick my way across the floor.  
  
I stop for a second at the base of the ladder that leads up to the loft. I hold my breath and listen carefully, making sure my hearing isn't playing tricks on me. I hear the soft strains of music drifting down from the loft above, and let out the breath I've been holding. Clark's radio. He is up there.   
  
I shine my light at the ladder and begin my ascent up the rungs. I swing myself over the top with a little effort, and then climb the small flight of stairs into Clark's secluded little clubhouse.  
  
I stand at the top of the stairs for a moment, just watching him as he stands there framed by the inky blackness just outside the loft's window. He leans down and peers intently into his telescope, and I am quickly reminded of the last time I came up here and interrupted him. Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, I kneel down and knock firmly on the planks of wood that make up the floor.  
  
"Knock, knock," I say as I knock. Clark jumps at the sudden sound and whirls around, tension written all over his face. When he sees it is just me, he relaxes...but only a little, I notice.  
  
"Hey, Chloe," he says, shifting from foot to foot as he shoves his hands into his pockets. "What's up?"  
  
"Not much," I reply. I nod my head toward the floor. "Sorry if I scared you...just, you know...last time you said I should knock..."  
  
"No, it's OK," he says, pulling one hand from his pocket and running it nervously through his hair. "You didn't scare me."  
  
"Could fooled me," I say, taking a few steps inside the loft. "You almost jumped through the roof."  
  
"Yeah, well...I'm a little more jumpy these days," he mumbles softly.  
  
'Me and my stupid mouth,' I think to myself. Of course he's jumpy...less than 72 hours ago he watched the sheriff come and drag his father off to jail for murder. A murder where victim was unceremoniously dumped inside the barn in which we now stood. A murder that was still unsolved. That's bound to make anyone look over their shoulder an extra time.  
  
I try to lighten the mood, and point to the telescope. "Getting the Lana fix at night now?" I ask, hoping I don't make it sound like I think he's some perverse peeping tom.  
  
"Oh...uh..no," Clark laughs nervously. "I found this weird looking crater on the moon...it looks like Mr. Adams, the new gym teacher. You know...in profile...with the nose and all," he says, stepping back from the telescope, silently inviting me to take a look. I cross the loft and peer into the eyepiece, confirming that Clark was in fact studying the moon and not Lana's bedroom window.  
  
"You're right," I say. "It does kinda look like him. Pretty weird."  
  
"Maybe it should go on the Wall of Weird," Clark says, a little hint of teasing creeping into his voice. I try to keep my face from falling at the mention of my wall, but I'm apparently unsuccessful, as Clark quickly mumbles, "Sorry...I shouldn't have mentioned that."  
  
I step back from the telescope and seat myself on a nearby bale of hay. "No...it's OK. Actually, it's what I came up here to talk to you about. And about the other day...my freakout at the Torch."  
  
"I'm sorry," Clark says again. "I'm sorry if you thought I was taking Lana's side. It wasn't anything like that. I just...I thought it would be the best temporary solution. It didn't have anything to do with her."  
  
I nod. "I know...I know you didn't mean anything by it. You were just trying to help."  
  
"I should have helped more," Clark says, settling down on the floor next to the bale of hay I'm sitting on, stretching his long legs across the floor. "It's just...I had some other stuff going on, and it was a mess....and I seem to make any mess I'm involved in worse. I didn't want to make your mess worse too."  
  
"It's OK," I tell him. "I wasn't exactly being Rational Girl. It just felt like something I really cared about was being taken away from me...that I was losing something to Lana, no less...and I just lashed out. You just happened to be there--both of you."  
  
"You know...she's not a bad person. She really was trying to help." Clark says, tilting his head back against the hay, meeting my eyes for a second before looking down at the barn floor again.  
  
"I know," I say, reaching over to pull a piece of straw from his hair. "That's part of it--she's so nice, and she's pretty, and she's got it all....except this one thing that was mine. I had a piece of something she couldn't touch, that I didn't have to share with her or anyone else...and suddenly, she did have it. It wasn't just mine anymore."   
  
Clark is silent for a moment, and I swallow nervously. I hope I haven't said too much...that I haven't tipped my hand...that Clark hasn't guessed that I'm not exactly talking about the Torch. Sure, losing the Torch to Lana hurts. But it's losing what's part of the Torch package that hurts more. The Torch was always something Clark and I could work on together. It wasn't as if the rest of the staff was willing to drop everything to follow me on another wacky mutant-chase. But Clark was always willing, even when he didn't believe me. Even when he didn't believe me, he always believed *in* me, which is why he was willing to throw caution to the wind and help me out...help me take on shaking up the establishment...the status quo in this leafy little hamlet. Now Lana is going to be the one needing help--even if she's not covering Wall of Weird material, she's going to need help. She's going to need someone to believe in *her*. And Clark was never one to turn down someone in need.  
  
"I think he was wrong, you know. Lana does too," Clark says, shaking me from my thoughts.  
  
"Who was wrong?" I ask, tossing the piece of straw I'd been twisting around my finger to the floor.  
  
"Kwan. You have the right to say the things you've said in the Torch. He doesn't have the right to censor you. Wall of Weird stuff needs to be covered too," Clark answers.  
  
I shake my head. "No...he's right. I shouldn't have printed those things in the paper. I was turning it into my own personal tabloid."  
  
Clark turns and looks at me, his eyes wide. "What are you saying? You're giving up on your theory?"  
  
"No," I answer. "It's just that this whole thing with your dad...it's made me sit back and do some thinking. It's made me sit back and take an objective look at what I was doing."   
  
Clark cocks his head to the side and looks at me quizzically. "How does my dad getting framed for murder make you look objectively at the Wall of Weird?"  
  
"Because what the police did to your dad--I was doing with the wall. If you asked anyone in this town, they'd tell you there was no way that Jonathan Kent is capable of killing a man. But they hauled him off all the same. Who cares about the evidence to the contrary?"  
  
"They weren't exactly lacking evidence," Clark sighs. "I mean, the body was in here, they found a gun in the truck..."  
  
"All circumstantial evidence. And they matched the prints on the gun to the prints at the Metropolis crime scene, so the evidence wasn't even right to begin with," I insist. "And that's what I've been doing...hauling the town to jail on circumstantial evidence. I've been putting my theories out there as fact, when the only thing I have to back them up with is my own opinion." I shake my head. "That's what the National Enquirer does. That's not journalism...it's entertainment for bored housewives while they stand in line at the Sav-A-Lot. And that's not why I got into journalism."  
  
"So you're going to accept Smallville is a normal little Kansas town?" Clark asks.  
  
"No," I answer. "I know my theories are right. And I'll keep pursuing them. I'm just not going to use the Torch to air them. If I find the evidence...sure, I'll print it. And then everyone will have to accept it--not because *I* say it's happening, but because the *evidence* says so."  
  
"Well, for what it's worth, I believe you," Clark says, reaching over and squeezing my hand.  
  
"I know you do," I smile, squeezing back.  
  
"So what's next?" he asks.  
  
I sigh. "Go to Kwan...throw myself on his mercy...show him I've adopted a new journalistic policy."  
  
"Should be pretty easy," Clark grins. "Lana's way over her head...she jammed the laser printer yesterday. I have a feeling she's more than willing to step aside."  
  
I groan. "She jammed Herbert? I just convinced him that jamming wasn't the fun joyride he thought it was."  
  
Clark laughs and shakes his head. "Well, I got him co-operating again," he assures me. His face then grows serious. "But really, Chloe...Lana doesn't want this job. She wants you to have it. She feels awful about all this."  
  
I just nod. "I know. And I'm going to apologize to her too. I just...I needed to apologize to you first. I needed to make sure things were right between us before I did anything."  
  
Clark climbs to his knees and faces me, reaching over and pulling me into a hug. "They're right between us...don't worry. They were never wrong. We just hit a little snag. No biggie."  
  
I smile to myself and burrow deeper into Clark's arms. I take a deep breath, drinking in the scent that's uniquely Clark...a mix of Ivory soap and Gain laundry detergent and the smell of alfalfa hay--an earthy mix that one really can only get by living on a farm. I close my eyes and revel for a brief moment in the feeling of safety that always comes over me when I'm wrapped up in Clark's arms. Not that I've spent a ton of time there, but I've spent enough to know that this is where I want to be, if only it were possible. Maybe if I took a second to admit it out loud, it could be possible. But I know I could never admit it to Clark. So I keep that thought locked up inside and the friendship facade firmly in place, although I have a feeling eventually, my facade is going to show some cracks.  
  
Clark pulls back and studies my face for a second. "Whatever you do decide with Kwan and all, you know I'll support you, right?" he asks.  
  
"I know," I tell him. "And..." I bite my lip, because now I'm getting ready to admit that I haven't exactly been a good friend to him recently. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry that I wasn't here for you when all this stuff was going down with your dad. I should have put all the other stuff aside and been there for you when you needed me."  
  
Clark just smiles. "It's OK. In fact, I'm glad you weren't. We actually picked a great time to have a spat, if there is such a thing as a good time. This was some crazy stuff...I wouldn't want you mixed up in it."  
  
"Why?" I ask, unable to resist. "You said you had some stuff going on that was getting messy...maybe I could have helped," I say, trying not to sound hurt that he hadn't come to me.  
  
"No, you couldn't of helped," he assures me. "Really. And...it's just complicated. I don't really want to talk about it," he says, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.   
  
I feel him starting to shut me out, which is exactly what I don't want, so I decide not to push. Instead, I plaster a smile on my face and reach out to accept the hand he's extending to me, grasping it firmly as he pulls me up off the hay and into a standing position.  
  
Clark intertwines his fingers with mine, and pulls me toward the stairs. "Come on...when I came out here, Mom was putting a batch of turtle brownies in the oven. They should probably be done by now and if we don't get there, Dad will eat the whole pan."  
  
"They didn't feed him in prison, huh?" I joke as we start down the loft's ladder, hoping Clark doesn't get upset due to my attempt at humor.  
  
"Well, he claims they only gave him bread and water, so Mom's been cooking up a storm all day," he grins back, reaching up and helping me off the ladder. He grabs my hand again, and pulls me along as he jogs lightly toward the house.   
  
"Ok, so he's hungry because he was incarcerated. What's your excuse?" I laugh as we climb the porch steps.  
  
"I'm a growing boy," he answers as he opens the back door. "I need a balanced diet from all the major food groups, including the brownie group," he adds with a chuckle as we enter the kitchen.  
  
"Hmm...I have a feeling my next in depth editorial is going to be on the lack of proper eating habits among Smallville students," I say. I reach into my bag and pull out my digital camera, snapping a picture of Clark shoving a huge chunk of brownie into his mouth.  
  
"Hey! What was that for!" he protests around a mouthful of brownie. He tries hard to make it seem like he's mad, but he's losing the battle with his mouth, which is quickly breaking out into a wide, chocolate coated grin.  
  
"Evidence," I say, grinning back as I devour a brownie of my own.  
  
The End 


End file.
